In the Life of...

Quote on Loss and Living

"The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life. We burn out not because we don’t care, but because we don’t grieve. We burn out because we’ve allowed our hearts to be so filled with loss, that we don’t care. "

*** Rachel Naomi Remen ***

Quote from Nelson Mandela

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

--Nelson Mandela in his inauguration speech in 1994

Quote of the Week

"The Man Watching" by Rainer Maria Rilke.

            I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
            so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
            that a storm is coming,
            and I hear the far-off fields say things
            I can't bear without a friend,
            I can't love without a sister.

            The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
            across the woods and across time,
            and the world looks as if it had no age:
            the landscape, like a line in the psalm book,
            is seriousness and weight and eternity.

            What we choose to fight is so tiny!
            What fights with us is so great!
            If only we would let ourselves be dominated
            as things do by some immense storm,
            we would become strong too, and not need
            names.

            When we win it's with small things,
            and the triumph itself makes us small.
            What is extraordinary and eternal
            does not want to be bent by us.
            I mean the Angel who appeared
            to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
            when the wrestlers' sinews
            grew long like metal strings,
            he felt them under his fingers
            like chords of deep music.

            Whoever was beaten by this Angel
            (who often simply declined the fight)
            went away proud and strengthened
            and great from that harsh hand,
            that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
            Winning does not tempt that man.
            This is how he grows:  by being defeated,
            decisively, by constantly greater beings.